News
This week Sophia stood on stage at the Future Investment Initiative summit in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, and announced she’s been awarded Saudi citizenship. It’s undoubtedly a PR stunt, and one which comes with a dose of sad irony given the robot citizen made its announcement unsupervised and without a headscarf, in a country where millions of women would be locked up doing the same. To read more on robot Citizenship, click here.
1aim, a German startup, is building a “ground up” AI platform for offices that combines physical security with artificial intelligence. From securing the actual locks in the doors, to optimizing conference room usage, the company intends to turn any building into the kind of place Marvel’s Tony Stark might work. To read more, click here.
To read ASOS PLC's full annual report and accounts for 2017 click here.
Dubbed "Piccadilly Lights", the billboard is now actually one giant screen and holds the record as Europe’s largest single digital screen. It also has cameras integrated within it using facial recognition technology than can detect the age, gender and mood of the millions of passers by. The billboard then reacts to that data to display ads accordingly. To read more, click here.
Flowers are such an emotive and powerful gift that we’ve found recipients feel even more connected to the sender once they’ve created their bouquet and shared [photos of] it with them,” says Aron Gelbard, CEO and co-founder of Bloom & Wild, a startup that sends flowers in the post. To read more, click here.
The UK market for toys and games will grow by 16.2 per cent over the next five years, according to GlobalData – but more than 84 per cent of that growth will come from online sales, it predicts.
GlobalData predicts that Amazon will overtake Argos to become the UK’s biggest retailer of toys in 2020, after 51.4 per cent of shoppers in the sector in 2017 visited the online giant. To read more click here.
The FCA has given Freetrade the greenlight. Freetrade, the fee-free stock trading app, has just passed a landmark on its mission to turn Britain into a nation of shareholders. In much the same way that challenger banks like Monzo and Starling are tearing up the rulebook of banking, Freetrade plans to change the way we buy and sell stocks by offering fee-free trading. To read more on Freetrade, click here.
Amazon is making good on its promise to eat advertising.
In its third-quarter earnings report today, the e-commerce giant said it saw “other” revenue, which is mostly composed of ad sales (and to a much smaller extent, its credit card business), grow 58 percent year over year to $1.12 billion. That’s a slight increase from the growth rate in the prior second quarter, when it grew 53 percent year over year.
To read more on Amazon's ad business, click here.
ROLI, a London-based music technology startup known for its Seaboard keyboard, has landed investment from Pharell Williams. The size of the investment remains undisclosed, but Williams will also be joining the startup as chief creative officer. To read more, click here.
The MMC London Fund focuses on early-stage London-based businesses that can generate significant levels of economic growth and create jobs in the capital. The GBP14 million technology co-investment fund – of which GBP9 million was provided by the Mayor of London – was designed to be matched by private investors ensuring at least GBP28 million would be channelled into high-growth SMEs in London. to read more, click here.